On television.

Now Give Thanks

Push Away From The Table For A Minute And Reflect On How Blessed We Are

November 27, 1996|By Steve Johnson, Tribune Television Critic.

Every year at this time, Americans of all creeds gather to give thanks by eating themselves into a belt-loosening stupor and watching the Detroit Lions.

That's fine if you're from Michigan or trying to gain weight for your role as Ralph Kramden in a big-screen remake of "The Honeymooners."

But here on the TV beat, we're in favor of reinventing traditions. Let us suggest that this Thanksgiving you undertake a family ritual that more thoroughly integrates television into the proceedings.

Many people in this culture pick on television. And it is, of course, the source and symbol of every societal ill, rather than merely a blank page on which an extraordinary variety of people get a chance to write.

But we don't spend enough time talking about the good things television does. So this year, take a moment as a family--perhaps between pie courses; perhaps in the stupor induced by your third post-prandial turkey sandwich--to note all the things about television for which you are thankful.

Here is our own, preliminary list:

Figure skating, nearly non-stop. Without TV's willingness to showcase any ex-Olympian who can still squeeze into tights--or any costumed character also available in doll form at Toys "R" Us--figure skating would be, except for in an Olympic year, just another thing to do to make hot chocolate taste better. Thanks to TV, it is our constant, perky, insouciant companion. Look at that toe loop!

Budget baby-sitting. What does an in-the-flesh sitter cost these days? Four bucks an hour? Six? With a television set, you've got a sure way to keep the wee ones occupied, absolutely free of charge. Sure, some shows are violent, some suggest that sexual congress is the best way to get to know someone, and others teach that any situation is just a wink and a nudge away from leering innuendo. But better they get it from television than out on the streets, right? And television will never eat the last of the Pepperidge Farm cookies, or try to sneak in its college-sophomore boyfriend after you leave.

Made-for-TV movies. As big-screen movies get more and more out of touch with what real life is like, television steps into the gap. It knows that the country is crawling with well-intentioned harried divorced working mothers dying of breast cancer who, under the influence of charming mustachioed strangers with secret murder and molestation raps, toss their bulimic, pre-alcoholic, heavy metal-devotee teen daughters in jail to teach them discipline and are only able to get them out with the help of their not-so-bad-after-all paunchy accountant ex-husbands and a late-movie self-defense scene in which mom blinds the stranger with her hairspray, drugs him with a Valium cocktail, then trusses him up in the back of the mini-van with a spare pair of pantyhose. That is American life, people. Television turns the mirror on us.

Teleliteracy. Where would the world of prose be without television to support its sagging corpus? Short most of its best sellers, that's where. Television and its literary lights have taught us that it's not enough to chuckle along with the laugh track at the famous comedian's faux exploits. It has given us the opportunity to divine more of his or her wisdom by plunking down $24.95 for philosophical musings that, helpfully, appear on pages which are not cluttered with paragraphs. And as to the charge that these white-space-friendly books are often ghostwritten, do you really think they write their own jokes in their sitcoms?

All those channels. Nobody ever complains about a library having too many books, or an octopus too many arms. So what's wrong with 57 channels, Mr. Bruce Springsteen? Without them, we wouldn't have ESPN2, spanning the globe to bring us every single event in the motorsports category, down to that new weekly show, "Midday at the Go-Kart Track." We wouldn't have HGTV and its two-part documentary on the chrysanthemum. And some of the sitcoms from television past would have actually been allowed to fade into the sunset, never to air again. What's more, Mr. "Boss," without your 57 channels, there might not even be a music-video outlet willing to play your 13th sluggish rewrite of that moaning song about Philadelphia. More is the American motto; television does its part.

Something to do on the holidays. Everybody loves his family, more or less. It's actually spending time with them that's the tricky part. Television does its part by filling those long holiday hours with something other than conversation. Grandpa's Depression stories are a downer compared to the funny, "oh, no" face that kid makes in "Home Alone." And who wants to hear Mom and Dad tell, again, how their first date was spent on a rainy night in a convertible at the drive-in when you can see Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed dancing right into a swimming pool? Did you know that recent research has proven that before television came along, there was no such thing as the Detroit Lions? Without TV, you might as well go to work.